On a back-road trek to the Bruno Thrift Store this morning, I stopped the car as three deer darted across the road. The smallest one, a yearling, kept on running. The two adults not only didn't run, they took a step closer to the car. Their eyes traveled from the front end to the rear, probably wondering what this jazzy little yellow thing was doing in a world of two-ton pickup trucks.
I put the car in idle and wished for my digital camera, as I was close enough to the deer to see the pattern of their nose leather. When one of the deer lowered its head, my reverie was replaced by the reality of what deer can do at this close range. They can charge. They can do extensive damage. I continued to town.
It's easy, even when you live in the middle of the woods, to engage in the Disneyfication of wildlife. Had I turned on my heel the moment I'd seen that porcupine, instead of watching it as if Rex Allen would start narrating at any moment, my dog Jerry may have been spared a snoutful of quills.
Queer Eye for the Bovine Guy
When the animated movie Barnyard came out several years ago, it irked me to see the main character, a foolhardy young bull named Otis, with udders. As if children wouldn't be able to identify a cow, or more properly a bovine, without them. I fumed about it all the way home. "Mom, it's just a movie," my son Wyatt reminded me. Apparently I'm not the only blogger who raised objections to the gender-bending bull.
I'm guilty of the same practice, that is referring to bovines as cows, even the males, because the terminology is more readily understood. But a lack of precise knowledge about livestock and wildlife, in my opinion, is what results in children in zoos getting injured because they want to pet the nice animal.
I put the car in idle and wished for my digital camera, as I was close enough to the deer to see the pattern of their nose leather. When one of the deer lowered its head, my reverie was replaced by the reality of what deer can do at this close range. They can charge. They can do extensive damage. I continued to town.
It's easy, even when you live in the middle of the woods, to engage in the Disneyfication of wildlife. Had I turned on my heel the moment I'd seen that porcupine, instead of watching it as if Rex Allen would start narrating at any moment, my dog Jerry may have been spared a snoutful of quills.
When the animated movie Barnyard came out several years ago, it irked me to see the main character, a foolhardy young bull named Otis, with udders. As if children wouldn't be able to identify a cow, or more properly a bovine, without them. I fumed about it all the way home. "Mom, it's just a movie," my son Wyatt reminded me. Apparently I'm not the only blogger who raised objections to the gender-bending bull.
I'm guilty of the same practice, that is referring to bovines as cows, even the males, because the terminology is more readily understood. But a lack of precise knowledge about livestock and wildlife, in my opinion, is what results in children in zoos getting injured because they want to pet the nice animal.
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